Rebelling Against The Media’s Standards Of Femininity

I was an awkward teenager. There is no way around that fact. You might be saying, “Everybody is awkward as a teenager!” This statement generally holds true, but there are always those few who slip through the cracks, and those crack-slippers were me and my best friends in high school.

I spent quite a few years pining after (what I believed to be) their perfect faces and bodies. I thought that if I could just fix certain things about myself, I would be as pretty and perfect as them. I thought that if I were as pretty and as perfect as them, all my problems would be solved, that I would be accepted.

The media that permeates our lives has a very narrow definition for women, beauty, and femininity. It berates women who show their flaws or imperfections, makes comedy out of women who display any sort of masculinity, and generally suggests that women only exist for the viewing pleasure of others. Though we may be given “quirky” female characters, like Zooey Deschanel’s Jess from New Girl, perfection and rigid femininity are still imposed upon them. There was an episode of Hannah Montana a couple of years ago (bear with me) where a major plot line included the main character wearing fake armpit hair to get rid of a boy she was seeing. That one episode disturbed me more than other media pressures had. On a show for children, a woman with visible body hair was a major laughing stock, something disgusting, comical, and ridiculous. And this was all being taught as perfectly okay by the family-friendly Disney Channel.

When I was a teenager, I turned to fashion and beauty magazines to find the solutions to ‘fix’ myself. I came to the conclusion that I needed to be smooth, hairless, sweat-less, perfectly dressed, and thin. I wore so much makeup to cover my acne that I was afraid to go swimming with my friends. My dark body hair offended me; I felt like any visible trace of it discredited my value as a girl. I tried to remove all the hair from my legs and arms, but I suffered from irritated skin and angry red bumps rather the smooth, poreless surfaces that I had seen in magazines. I turned down opportunities to run, play, and explore because I was afraid I would sweat through my clothes, something that was clearly not feminine. I wore clothing that I thought made me look hot and desirable even when it wasn’t practical to do so, like during the SATs or on a class fieldtrip.

The brand of femininity that I was striving towards was suffocating me. This is the same brand of femininity that is sold by popular culture and beauty magazines. It is a femininity that is only about perfection and being a valuable object of somebody else’s gaze. It is a femininity that requires you to be quiet and inoffensive. It is a femininity that preoccupies us with fulfilling its standards so that we don’t have time to think about anything else.

When I remember the way that looking perfect and feminine controlled my life for years, I suddenly want to take preteen girls and shake them. I see this trend of seemingly innocuous pressures grow — in kid’s television shows, in commercials, in manipulative marketing against vulnerable consumers — and I want to scream. Being a teenager might always be a bit uncomfortable and awkward, but it doesn’t need to set us up for a lifetime of disappointment about ourselves.

Once I realized and rebelled against the sheer ridiculousness of this particular brand of femininity, I began to love my body and myself. I no longer felt the need to dress to please others. I started to value experiences over appearances. I stopped shaving my body hair because I know that its existence does not define my worth as a woman.

I know now that I can be feminine without being perfect and without following society’s expectations about gender. My femininity includes short, bitten, unpainted nails and long dresses. It includes my manners for those who deserve them and my anger for those who tempt it. My femininity doesn’t allow my self worth to be defined by a pimple or some hair under my arms. It embraces my whole self, because my whole self embodies my femininity. It is all that I know and all I have rebelled against. Best of all, it is defined by me; not by Cosmo.

How do the media and standards of femininity affect your life? Feel free to share with us in the comments section.

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Great article. Femininity, or lack thereof, has to be something people discover and choose for themselves. The media’s influence is inevitable, but I’d also like to stress the important role our mothers play in this issue. My mom hammered home all of these things for me at an early age, gave me The Beauty Myth, and overall was a fantastic feminist role model for me. I of course thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Yet still she complained endlessly about her thighs, her eyebrows, this, that. I think it’s disturbing that even among women that see what’s happening in the bigger scheme, we still feel pressure to stay waxed, caked, plucked, and polished to fit the mold we know is bullshit. Scary. Every thirteen year old should read your article, but every new mother should, too.

VoiceOfReason555

Boys have the same problems as you did when you were a girl. I’m sorry you had problems, but it is not a gender specific problem, so stop falsely portraying it as such.

The media also has a narrow definition for masculinity (6 foot tall, confident, good body etc.). Why do you ignore this issue?

Men are also berated for showing flaws. If his biceps are not big enough, or if he is not confident enough he will also be made to feel inadequate (especially when dating women).

You mention one incident of a woman being made fun of for having fake armpit hair? What about the myriad of times when men are made fun of in commercials? And you stamp you feet at ONE portrayal? Now you have some idea of what men feel like EVERY time they switch on the TV.

LC

Did she ever say that the standards of media are solely a feminist problem? She was simply addressing the female side because THIS IS A WEBSITE DEVOTED TO FEMINISM. Based on this comment and pretty much all of your other comments, I don’t think you understand that!

“Now you have some idea of what men feel like EVERY time they switch on the TV.”
And here you are making yourself guilty of the very thing you accused the author of.
Very few people see an advert and think “Psh yeah whatever, I don’t need that. I’m totally as attractive/desirable/confident/talented as them.” I’m NOT saying is was a female problem first, and I ask you not to imply that it was a male problem first.

VoiceOfReason555

And must I remind you that it was feminism that promoted these images in the first place – the late Helen Gurley who became editor-in-chief of Cosmo magazine had a huge influence on this industry, with her promotion of the “Cosmo-Girl”. This whole rampant female imagery has as much to do with female narcissism as it does with female victimhood.

Even when you are a victim of feminism gone wrong, you still blame it on men.